50 YEARS OF JOYFILLED PAIN

The New York Mets are celebrating 50 years as a franchise, a team with a tradition not their own and a legacy of easy fulfillment.

Being a Mets fan for 50 years has taken its toll on me. But why do I root for a team that has a lifetime record as of 2011 of: 3,832-4,166? Hard to answer.

They seem to be the continuous laughing stock of baseball, an icon for failure, yet every year thousands of others and me come out to support them. It’s in their genes, and it can never go away, thank God!

It started out 57 years ago when the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants, archenemies and perennial haters of the New York Yankees left New York for the sunny climate of California.

Once the two teams left New York, a sudden void descended on New York, on Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens too. Half the baseball fans in New York were National League fans, and the Yankees, as hard as I might try, could not win me over.

They are a team with a lifetime record of: 9,670 - 7,361, one would think it easy to jump on the bandwagon and root for a winner. Many former Giant and Dodger fans did start to root for the Yankees, but I always suspected just how loyal most of them are. It is hard to erase the disappointment the Yankees rained down on Dodger and Giant fans.

There was a human element that ran through both the Dodgers and Giants organizations, and it never existed with the Yankees. In spite of their winning constantly, the Yankees tot his day have no color, no real personality, nothing to connect them to their fans except a merchandising of the team and logo. When I see the Yankee logo displayed I see fans that say: “Hey, I’m a Yankee fan, they are the best, that is why I root for them.” I wonder how long the logo will stay if they start to lose for more than one year in a row?

Back in the 40’s and 50’s, Yankee Stadium was just another boardroom or extension of a corporate headquarters. The fans dressed in suits complete with wing tipped shoes and fedoras. Over in Ebbet’s Field and the Polo Grounds, the stands were filled with stripped polo shirts, t-shirts and sneakers, there ere no such thing as designer sneakers. These were U.S. Keds, and they were the everyday day footwear of poor street kids.

The Dodgers did have a little more style than the Giants, with their own mascot in Emmett Kelly, the Sym-Phony Band, the first black man to play major league baseball, and a dialect that to this day evokes “dem bums”!

The Mets are the Brooklyn Dodgers, re-incarnated! They have taken their cue though: NOT from the Dodgers, but from their fans, the same fans and the bloodline of the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants.

There is very definitely a human element in the Mets, a kind of “Wait-‘til next year” attitude, and a resignation to losing with the hope of someday seeing a winner. If the Mets were as successful as the New York Yankees, they would not be as much fun to watch, the emotion of rooting for them would be lost, and who really cares when there is NO drama in a game. Just ask a Yankee fan.

The Yankees have the tradition of winning, they have their fans and a fan base, but it is a sandy soil they built it on, the Mets have built theirs on the hard bed rock of pure love for their losers, and an acceptance of the fact that tomorrow brings more rain, but also more love.

There was the 1962 inaugural team who lost the most games ever, the 1986 Mets who won the third most games ever, and the Miracle Mets of ’69, there was the curse of the black cat, marvelous Marv Thornberry, a fake mustachioed manager, and the fact that they made their home debut on Friday the 13^th. And who can forget the mediocrity of the 1973 season, one in which you were told: “You gotta believe!’ There was the sign man, the big apple popping out of a hat, banner day, the chant: “Let’s Go Mets!” Casey’s hype and a NY City boy named Franco, and of course their theme song: ”Meet the Mets!” They were always and truly “Amazin’! They went from 9^th place in ’68 to World Champions in ’69! And will anyone ever forget the two great catches by Ron Swaboda or the one by Tommy Agee in the ’69 Series? Or how about the batted ball by Mookie Wilson that eluded Bill Buckner that turned around the ’86 Series?

Happy Birthday, New York Mets!

That's all I wrote, Folks!